


If a Tree Falls in the Forest...

by Lilysmum



Category: The Killing
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:59:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5519600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilysmum/pseuds/Lilysmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have no idea where this could possibly fit into the series, but it is set sometime after their working/friendship relationship is well-established.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If a Tree Falls in the Forest...

**Author's Note:**

> I had this written and then decided to make it into a Christmas fic...hope it isn't too corny!

“Cops aren’t supposed to get lost in the wilderness, Holder.”

Linden says this as her partner helps her climb out of his car.  Which is practically upright, on its side, in a ditch, one tire blown.

“We ain’t lost Linden,” Holder tells her, pulling her up onto the side of the road, holding onto her forearms until she regains her footing. “And in case you didn’t know, this ain’t the wilderness, either. It’s a national forest.  And that cabin back there? It has an actual _address._ Linden.”

Holder steps back, walks in a circle to assess the situation. “We’re just…stuck,” he offers with a shrug and a careful grin, “You sure you’re okay?”

Linden nods, “Yeah,” she tells him, “Cops aren’t supposed to crash their cars, either,” she reminds him, flexing her neck left and right, rubbing her shoulder, then her knee. She’d banged them hard when the car went off the road.

“Hey,” Holder protests, “I didn’t crash the car.”  He looks back in the direction they’d come from, squinting in the near darkness, “We hit a patch of ice, in case you weren’t payin’ attention, and spun out. And can I remind you,” he continues before Linden can argue with him, “that it was your idea to come out here today of all days.”

It’s Christmas Eve.

Sarah was the one who decided they were working it. Her son was having Christmas with his father and she would not see him until afterwards. She and Holder had  been trying to interview a witness, a frightened little rabbit of a man named Jerry, all week long and the guy had finally agreed to speak to them but only if they met him at his cabin, more than two hours outside of town. They’d had trouble finding it, and then of course Jerry didn’t show up. They’d waited a couple of futile hours, knowing it was a waste of time, before deciding to head back into the city.

The storm that was forecast to start sometime before midnight is already underway, with high winds and blowing snow.

Linden walks back towards the disabled car.

“Maybe your tires are under-inflated,” she muses with a sigh, hands on her hips, “Maybe that’s why we spun out.”

“Maybe _your tires_ are under-inflated,” Holder mutters under his breath, takes out his cigarettes and lights one, “In case you hadn’t noticed Linden it’s a hundred fucking degrees below zero out here and there’s ice. On the road.”

Linden tilts her chin at him and extends her hand, wiggling her fingers for the cigarette.

“I’m gonna call it in.” Holder says, handing his cigarette over and taking out his phone, “You just find something to content yourself with until they come and tow us out of here. Go look for clues or something.”

 

It’s about an hour later when even Holder has to admit that they are well and truly fucked.

They have no cellphone signal and nothing on the police radio either. They climb a hill, and Holder even climbs a tree, obtaining nothing but frustrating little beeps on both of their phones. They aren’t dressed for the weather.  Linden shivers inside her jacket and studies Holder while they trade opinions about the situation. The wind blows icy snow pellets down between his jacket and the pale skin of his neck and his face is pinched and white. It’s fully dark and the trees around them creak and groan in the wind. What they agree on is that they have very few options.

“So what we gotta do is,” Holder says finally, after one last text message fail, “We have to walk back to that cabin.  We’ll have to spend the night there and then in the morning I can hike back out to the highway. I’ll get signal there.”

“We could hike back out there now then,” Linden suggests, albeit half-heartedly, pulling her hands up inside her sleeves and pushing them inside her pockets, regretting her choice of jacket.  She’s irritated at how cold she is, Eddie Bauer coats are supposed to be warm.

“It’s like ten miles Linden,” Holder says, exasperated, “Did you hit your head or something when we went off the road? We’d fucking freeze before we got there. And then what are we gonna do, just stand around and wait for them to come get us?  In this weather? And I don’t gotta be anywhere until dinner time tomorrow, anyways, do you?”

“No.” Linden’s lips are pressed into a thin white line, “You’re right,” she admits and she can see in Holder’s eyes the tiny puff of pride that he can’t help feeling when she agrees with him, even now, even after all this time. “It’s the cabin, I guess. Come on.”

“I mean seriously Linden,” Holder goes on as they walk, ducking under the branches that nearly block their path to the clearing where the tiny cabin stands, “That asshole Jerry might still show up. We can drive back out in his car. And even if he doesn’t, that place is an actual real log cabin. People pay big bucks to stay in places like that. Probably got a nice big fireplace, goose down duvets, maybe a bottle of something tasty in the liquor cabinet…” He turns back to face her with a triumphant smile on his face which fades as soon as he sees her look. He holds up both hands in mock surrender.

“I ain’t hittin’ on you Linden,” he tells her quickly, “I’m just sayin…”

Linden sighs and peers upward through swirling snow to the black sky, “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” she concedes.

 

But it is so bad.

It’s incredibly bad.

“A five-year-old could’ve picked this lock,” Holder tells her right before he pushes the door open and they’re able to walk right in, beaming their flashlights around what was obviously built as a very basic hunt camp. 

One room, that’s it. No electricity, no water, no fireplace. There’s a small table and a couple of chairs, a decades old sofa and an ancient iron bedstead in one corner. There’s a woodstove but the chimney is missing. There are few basic supplies but none of them are of any use – a camp stove and a lantern but no fuel, some cooking utensils, a few tools.

“Well this sucks,” Linden says as she shines her flashlight on the old bed and its stained, lumpy mattress.

“Holy shit,” Holder declares, “This place is rustic as _shit_ , Linden. Hey check this out!”  He is lifting an old rifle off of two pegs in the wall above the door. She watches him in disbelief as he raises the firearm, pointing it towards the window and squinting along its site.

“Look out Mama there’s a white boat comin’ up the river,” he sings under his breath and laughs, then pitches his voice higher and tries again, “Down by the ri-ver, I shot my bay-bee…”

“Don’t fool around with that thing!” Linden practically spits out the words, suddenly angry again, “Are you trying to make a bad situation worse?”

She doesn’t understand how he can be so cheerful, and she stomps around and she swears and she tries her phone again facing this way and that until it occurs to her that maybe he is putting it on for her benefit. She’s sorry that she made it seem like their predicament is his fault. He had warned her about the storm. He had also predicted correctly that their little rabbit-man would not show.

“I’m sorry, Holder,” she tells him softly, speaking to his back as he reaches to hang the rifle back up on its spot on the wall, “We never should have come out here today. My bad.” She mimes quotation marks and tries a smile that almost works.

“Yeah well you know that old hindsight, Linden,” Holder grins at her and runs his hand through his hair, “Twenty-twenty, right? And just so you know, you can cuss me out and stamp your feet all you like, it don’t bother me. You’re still the only one I want to be lost in the wilderness with.”

His shameless attempt at manipulation makes it impossible for her not to smile, for real, at his goofiness and she decides to play the game. “You go get the duvets,” she tells him, “I’ll pour the drinks.”

 

They are lucky enough to find two mothball scented sleeping bags stashed inside an old wooden trunk that stands at the bottom of the bed.  They were good quality when they were new, likely twenty years ago, or more, and someone has obviously taken care of them, keeping them rolled up inside their storage bags.

“Not bad,” Holder remarks as he finishes unrolling them on the bed, “They should be pretty warm, looks like. Hey Linden,” he winks at her, glancing back over his shoulder, “When d’ya think was the last time this bed saw any action?”

When he gets no response from her he continues, laughing, “Some toothless old Elmer and the missus, doin’ the wild thing, tearing it up on some Saturday night in 1983…”

“Thanks very much for the visual, Holder,” Sarah shudders, grimaces, “Like I really want to think about who’s DNA I’m going to be lying on top of…”

Holder rolls up his hoodie for Linden to use as a pillow and folds up his jacket to make one for himself. They bed down side by side on the lumpy old bed and turn off their flashlights. 

But even zipped inside the sleeping bag with her jacket over top as an extra layer Linden is freezing. Her feet are the worst. She can’t feel her legs from the knees down. She is chilled right down into her bones, and she knows she will never warm up, not until she gets back to civilization and into a hot shower. She knows from experience that when she gets this cold her body can never generate any heat of its own. She lies curled on her side in the inky darkness and squeezes her eyes shut, trying to will herself to sleep even as she knows that it will never work. The wind is howling and she can hear the snow being blown against the cabin in sheets, scouring the windows like sand.

“You warmin’ up yet?” Holder’s voice surprises her some time later.  He had been so quiet she’d thought he was asleep.

“No.” she tells him shortly, “I’m never going to get warm here Holder. Just forget about it. Go to sleep.”

“I’d like to go to sleep,” he tells her, “you know, before my stomach starts sending messages to my brain about how empty it is.”  His voice is deep and smooth in the darkness and sounds so close to her, almost right by her ear. “But I ain’t gonna get there with you and your teeth chatterin’ right beside me.”

“Don’t worry,” Linden grumbles, “I’ll be dead of hypothermia soon, then it’ll be really, really quiet for you.”

“You got a couple options, the way I see it,” Holder continues, and she knows he cannot see her but she rolls her eyes at him anyway, out of habit.

“What?” she sighs, then turns over to face him. His eyes are huge and luminous in the dark. Either her eyes have adjusted to the darkness now or there is some light coming in from outside that wasn’t there before.  It must be the moon, she decides, that’s lighting the room a little, or the snow-filled clouds, or something.

“Well you could get up and do some jumping jacks and some sit-ups and stuff. Get your blood going. That’d warm you up. “

“I’m not doing that Holder. I’m not getting out of this sleeping bag to leap around. My shoulder hurts and so does my knee. Just go to sleep if you can.” Sarah sighs, “And how can you be warm anyway?” she demands jealously.

“I’m hot blooded, Linden, didn’t I ever tell you that? Which leads me right into Option Number Two.”

“Which is?”

“Well we can zip these two sleeping bags together and make one big one. And you could get over here next to me.  I’ll warm you up. And I’m not hittin’ on you either!” he adds before she has a chance to open her mouth, “C’mon Linden, you know you’re my bestie. I wouldn’t do that. If I was gonna hit on you I would have done it a long time ago. Come share the heat, partner.”

Another half hour of shivering and Option Two becomes irresistible. Linden surprises herself by agreeing to the plan and holds her flashlight in shaking hands while Holder zips the two sleeping bags together. Once inside she squeezes up next to him lying on her side, her back to his chest, her legs pushed up against his.

“Shit, woman, you _are_ cold,” Holder sighs, and curls himself around her, giving her a brief one-armed hug. 

Yes, she is cold, but he is warm.  After only a few moments of contact with him she can feel little tendrils of heat snaking through their layers of clothing to seep into her chilled muscles and bones.  Its just minutes after that when she starts to relax, her body softening and unstiffening against his.

“This is so good,” She sighs thankfully. She is sure that she only thought the phrase, but then realizes she must have said it aloud because Holder answers her, his voice is sleepy and this time it really is right in her ear.

“Yeah?” he wraps his arm around to the front of her and takes hold of her hands, holding them both in one of his, warming them too, “Toldja. Now go to sleep Linden.”

Within minutes he is breathing slowly, and his body slackens around her. Who knew that Holder’s angular body would feel so good.  So accommodating. Perfect, really.  Sarah’s only slightly taken aback when she realizes that her life, at least for the moment, has narrowed down to two simple things. All she needs in the world is to be warm and close to this person, the one she is so used to spending time with, the one who is always there.

Suddenly she is so grateful for this man, and not just for his body heat. She sighs deeply and thinks of other things too, like how he lets her go off on her tangents and follows her against his better judgement. And how he knows when to keep his mouth shut and also when to call her on her shit. But mostly she realizes that she is thankful just for his presence, for his inane good humour, for his generosity with his time, his cigarettes, his tolerance. She has never known anybody who was so genuinely content to just be with her, whether she was having a good day or a bad one.

“You’re the only one I want to be lost in the wilderness with too, Holder,” She whispers into the darkness, not intending for him to hear.  He surprises her by answering again.

“Mmmm…” he presses his face into her hair now and takes a deep breath. He slides both of his arms around her and squeezes, holds on. This time he doesn’t let go. “And I ain’t hittin on you Linden,” he whispers into her hair.

 

A few more minutes pass and Linden realizes that she is warm now, and that she never knew that simple body warmth could feel so good. So safe, so comfortable. She doesn’t spend much time wondering what is happening but she does know one thing: she doesn’t want Holder to fall asleep.

“When would it have been?” she asks him now.

“Huh?” he asks, and she can tell from his voice that she has pulled him back from the edge of sleep, “When would what’ve been?”

“You said if you were going to hit on me it would have been a long time ago.  I was just wondering when that would have been.”

Sarah feels a shift in Holders body now. He wakes up, stiffens up, pulls back and away from her.

“What, for serious?” he asks her, “Why d’you gotta get all chatty for now Linden?” He sounds genuinely puzzled, and she marvels at the fact that he still hasn’t figured out that something is happening.  

Linden pushes herself back against him, takes his hand and pulls his arm back around her and waits for him to relax again.

“Because you made me think, Holder.” She tells him honestly, “You made me think about us and… how it’s been and… I just wanted to know.” At first Sarah thinks that the darkness is making it easy for her to talk to him, but no, she realizes, it’s always easy to talk to Holder. It has always been.

“Okay,” Holder sighs, and answers without hesitation, “It would have been that night when I waited for you at the marina. Remember, way back, when you spied on me at my NA meeting?  I met you at Reggie’s boat and I asked you if there was anything you wanted to ask me. And I found out that you were okay with me. Who I am. You didn’t think I was a horrible person. So that night would have been it. That would have been the first time.”

Linden stays silent, processing her memory of that night. All she can remember is the lights on the water in the darkness and Holder’s face, how his eyes had looked, completely humble, and so open.  Hopeful, even. He had insisted on driving them back to the station and the atmosphere inside the car was charged, she remembers, almost electric with something she couldn’t name. At the time she’d figured that he’d had no idea what he was saving her from, that night: another bad scene with her son and with Reggie, another horrible phone conversation with her fiancé, more feelings of inadequacy and the frustration of always trying, trying, trying among people who did not see it that way. Now, looking back, she’s not so sure. Maybe Holder had known even then that she needed acceptance from someone just as badly as he did.

Its ages before she can answer him. All she can think of is that they have wasted so much time.

“And you didn’t, because…” Linden finally asks.

“Damn, Linden,” he sighs and she feels him try to pull away from her again, but he can’t, the constraint of the sleeping bag keeping him right where he is, right where she wants him to be,  “You were like, supposed to be marrying the other guy, remember?  I didn’t think it would be…well-received, put it that way.” Holder pauses now, then amends his statement.

“Nah, that’s not why, not really,” he tells her with a heavy sigh, “It’s because up until that exact second I thought it was only a matter of time before you figured me out. And that you wouldn’t want to work with me anymore after that, once you knew.  So I was…relieved, I guess. I wanted to stay on the case. I wanted to work with you. I wasn’t gonna push my luck.”

Linden turns over now, to face him. She can see his face clearly; it’s gotten much lighter in the cabin somehow. It must be the snow, she decides, it must be the moon reflecting off of the new-fallen snow outside that’s producing a silvery glow in the air. Holder’s eyes are wide open and dark, staring into her own. She looks into them for a long moment, she can’t see the line between the pupil and the iris, just the white and the dark together. It is the strangest sensation that hits her as she studies his face in the semi-darkness.  It’s almost as if she is looking into her own face. Her arms snake up around his neck of their own accord and she pushes herself up as close to him as she can, denim to denim, her sweater up against his t-shirt.

“You might have been surprised,” is the last thing she says before she kisses him.

 

Holder’s a good kisser, she is not surprised to find out.

Slow. Strong but gentle. He gives her all the control, at first, content to let her lean up over top of him, welcoming her tongue’s first foray into his mouth with simple grateful acceptance, and no macho territorial battle.  He steps up his game though when she does the trick of taking off her bra without removing her sweater, turning over and pressing her down into the mattress hard enough for her to feel him through his jeans as if he knows the effect it will have on her.  By the time she undoes her jeans and partially wiggles out of them he has mostly taken over, he has one hand under her lower back and the other up under her sweater and his talented mouth is doing magical things.

Linden does not normally like someone’s weight on top of her.  Not only does she feel trapped, but she’s uneasy at being putty in someone else’s hands, even big warm skilled hands like Holder’s. She’s so breathless she’s getting self-conscious, and even though part of her just wants to go with it she feels that she needs to turn the tables on this guy. Who does he think he is, she wonders, turning her into a mass of needy nerve endings, making ridiculous girly noises come out of her mouth, and how can he just lie there with all his clothes still on, looking so fucking pleased with himself because she’s the one that started it.  It takes all her strength to pull away from him to try to catch her breath, smiling against her better judgement at the cocky ‘what do you think of me now’ grin on his face.

She slides her hands underneath his t-shirt first, enjoying the small flinch of his abs and his surprised little groan, then goes straight for his jeans. He helps her, unzipping, tugging them down a little, and now Holder’s the one that’s breathless as she slides her hands behind him and grabs his ass with both of her hands and holds on, pressing herself back up against him.

“You’ve got a skinny ass, Holder,” she tells him. Skinny but strong, she notes, and hard, he’s hard everywhere. She runs her hands up over the ropy muscles in his back, squeezes his legs between her own, plants one of her heels in the back of his thigh and pulls him as close to her as she can.

“It ain’t my fault all my weight’s in the front,” he rasps in her ear and then he’s back on her mouth again. This time she forgets why she ever wanted to take the lead.  

They work out a good two-way groping system that lets them keep kissing while at the same time everybody is getting what they need without letting too much cold air inside the sleeping bag. In no time at all Sarah feels like she is way ahead of Holder, almost embarrassingly so, and she puts the brakes on. She lets go of him and pulls his hand away from her body and winds her arms around his neck.

They’re both panting when Holder opens his eyes to look at her. She smiles at him through the curtain of her messed up hair. Her hands move to stroke the sides of his face and then slide down, down his sides, grasping at his jeans and pulling them, using her feet too, grabbing at him to get rid of his pants. He helps her again, dragging the loose denim down, pulling his feet out, but then seems kind of paralysed. He is staring at her, his grin gone now, waiting to see what she will do so she makes it obvious, tugging at his hipbones.

“Are we really doing this?” Holder asks, raising himself up on one arm and pushing her hair aside so he can see her face.

“Mmm,” Linden answers him, “Do you want to stop?”

Holder flops his head back and looks up at the ceiling for a second and half laughs, as if she has just said the most ludicrous thing in the world.

“What do you think?” he asks her, rubbing his cock up against her thigh. He is really, really hard. “Does this feel like I want to stop?”

He leans down to attack her mouth, then her neck, he tries to go lower but runs up against the bottom of the sleeping bag and gives up then and tickles her with his chin, making her laugh. Against his objections that she will get cold she peels off her bulky sweater, loving the feel of his facial hair against her bare chest.

“I don’t have…” he offers.

“I don’t care.”

“Do you want the top?”

“I’ll get too cold.”

“Okay…you sure?”

“ _Yes_.”

Holder lifts himself enough to slide up and over to rest between her legs and she reaches down to help him.

“Jesus,” he sighs as he makes the first slow slide in.

”Yes,” Sarah agrees with him, pressing her face to his shoulder, because Holder is right. It’s so good, it’s almost too good. It feels like being seventeen, only better because they’re not. It feels crazy, and sort of perfect and it very quickly becomes the only thing that matters in the world.

Some force compels her to lock her legs around him and hold on tight, as tight as she can even though it is not something she would usually do. She has the feeling that he isn’t able to move as much as he wants but she can’t let go, somehow the contact, his weight on her, is working for her, every shove of his hips against hers is just hard enough to push her one step closer. She can feel the lumps and springs in the horrible mattress jabbing into her lower back but she doesn’t care, it just counters the feel of his lean body on top of her and makes him feel even better, harder, stronger, heavier. _This is Holder_ , she thinks to herself, for some reason, _this is him_.

Holder seems to be in the zone, unhurried, like he could go on forever but when she pulls back to look at him she can see that he is barely breathing, his eyes are looking to the side towards the window, trying to distract himself and buy some time, she figures, trying to wait her out. There’s a lot of noise, she realizes, the bed is creaking and squeaking and the iron headboard is slamming into the cabin wall at a perfectly measured pace. She thinks she has been making noise too, something else that she would not normally do, but she can’t seem to control the string of nonsensical syllables and sighs and profanity that she has been breathing into his ear.

“Go,” she tells him, to let him off the hook, “Just go. I’ll be there.”

She releases him from her iron-grip leg hold as he slides his eyes back onto hers with a lazy grin.

“Not yet,”

She’s not sure if he says it aloud, or if she just reads his mind, she can’t tell because she’s going, going, almost gone.

“Soon, Linden,” he says, then, “C’mon.”

He slides his hand back underneath her and half-turns on his side, holding her body up towards himself, almost lifting her right up off the mattress and that’s what does her in, in the end. It starts with his fingers splayed out against her lower back and spreads outward from there like wildfire. He makes her come in about two minutes and then follows right after, her name just a sob on his lips pressed into the skin between her neck and shoulder, her face wet with what can only be tears. His? Hers? She doesn’t know.

 

Afterwards she is still clinging to him, and he is still hard everywhere as his heartbeat gradually slows against hers. As she comes back to herself she strokes his back weakly and feels his muscles start to unlock one by one until his weight on her makes it hard for her to breathe. Holder shifts slightly to the side.

“Damn.” Is the first thing that he says, minutes later, the word flowing from his mouth like molasses, “That was a lot of noise, Linden.” He nudges her in the side with his finger.

“If a tree falls in the forest,” she says, and somehow it seems funny and she laughs.

“Do you mean, if a tree _fucks_ in the forest…?” Holder suggests and then they both laugh.

He sobers up and pulls the sleeping bag tightly around them although for the moment it’s not needed, they have body heat to burn. And Holder is thinking about something, she’s sure, she can almost hear the wheels turning.

“Hey do you mean, if somebody doesn’t perceive something, does it really exist?” He asks her a minute later, “Are you goin’ all metaphysical on me now Linden?”

“What? No! Jesus. I don’t even know why I said it.”

“Cause yeah, it does exist. It don’t matter if someone happens to be a little slow on the uptake. Whatever it is, it’s still there. It was always there. Trust me on this, partner.” 

They lie motionless in the darkness for a while. Sarah can literally hear her own heartbeat, and feel Holder’s thudding against her cheek where she rests against his chest. The silence presses in from all sides. After a minute it dawns on her that something is missing. The howling wind. The driving snow.

“Storms over,” she observes.

“We blew it out, Linden,” Holder tells her with a chuckle, “We kicked its _ass_ , it couldn’t compete. We’re like…our own force of nature or somethin’.”

“Are you warm now?” he asks, rolling onto his back and sliding his arm beneath her head so that she can use his shoulder for a pillow.

Linden nods.

“You gonna let me go to sleep now?” He asks her a minute later.

She nods again.

Holder sighs, wraps his arm around her shoulders.

“Get some shut-eye Linden,” he whispers in her ear, “Cause in the mornin’…”

“What?” she picks up on the twang in his voice, and asks him, “You’re making waffles?”

Holders chuffs at this.

“That’d be boss, wouldn’t it?” He nudges her in the side again, “Nah, what I was gonna say is that I know this was all … pretty okay, and that?”

Sarah nods, “Mmmm. More than okay.”

“But what I was gonna tell you is that in the morning, that’s when I’m at my best, Linden, my absolute _best_ … know what I’m sayin…?”

She groans. “Please don’t make me think about the morning, Holder,” No toilet. No toothbrush. No _coffee_.

“Fair enough,” he agrees, “But can we at least hold hands when we’re walking back out to the highway?”

This is his way of asking her if it’s real, she sees, he’s already there but he’s checking on her.  She resists the urge to ask him how long he has wanted this.

Sarah nods her head again, realizing that she is actually sleepy now; her head is buzzing and she’s feeling heavy in the arms and legs. A few minutes later she is just about to slide off into sleep when Holder suddenly squirms away from her and starts routing through his jacket, pulling out his phone.

“Hey,” he says excitedly, as if something wonderful has happened. Something else wonderful.

“What?” she asks him, sighing, not really wanting to hear his answer; the world is just too perfect right now, “Did you get a signal?”

“No Linden, better than that. Check this out!”

He holds his phone so that she can see the display.

12:07 am. December 25th.

It’s Christmas Day.

Sarah first reaction is to ask him who needs Christmas when they have a double sleeping bag. But she checks herself as she lifts her hand to take the phone from him and tuck it back inside his jacket. She reaches behind his neck and guides him to lie back down, smiling gently into his wide eyes. He is staring at her with a look that can only be described as complete wonder. He looks like he wants to say something but he is silent. For once, she notes, the man is speechless.

She knows the date is a big deal for him. She wonders if he thinks this is a Christmas miracle.

Maybe it is, she decides.  

“Merry Christmas, Holder,” she tells him, pressing her lips to his forehead, pulling the sleeping bag up snugly and wrapping both of her arms around him.

Holder’s eyes slip closed as he settles down against her.

“Merry Christmas Linden.”

 

 


End file.
